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Last month millions of savvy consumers signed up to receive $40 government coupons to help pay for analog-to-digital television conversion boxes, devices that will be needed to keep many old TV sets working when the nation’s full-power broadcasters go all digital in February 2009.

Now it appears all those on-the-ball consumers will actually be penalized for their on-the-ballness.

The problem is that Congress included a 90-day expiration date on the converter box coupons in the 2005 legislation that created the program. That 90-day clock starts ticking when the coupons are actually mailed out by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, an arm of the U.S. Department of Commerce that is overseeing the coupon program.

NTIA planned to begin mailing out the first coupons this week, meaning they will expire in late May. That means millions of consumers will be denied the opportunity to use their coupons to buy the only sub-$40 converter box expected to be offered by electronic retailers.

The converter box we are talking about is the TR-40 from Echostar, the big satellite television company that operates Dish Network. Echostar made a big splash when it recently announced it would be selling the TR-40 for $39.95, meaning it would essentially be free for consumers using the government coupon.

So far, all of the converter boxes hitting the market are selling for at least $50, with most costing more than that.

Echostar originally said it planned to have the TR-40 units available in limited quantities by the middle of next month, and in “unlimited quantities” by June. But this week Echostar said the boxes won’t be available at all – even in limited quantities – until June or July. At this point it is anybody’s guess when there will be enough of the TR-40 units available to satisfy what is very likely to be overwhelming consumer demand.

We’ve never really understood why Congress put a 90-day expiration date on the coupons, but it did. Unfortunately, getting rid of it now will quite literally require an act of Congress.

Although Congress nearly always moves at glacial speed, legislators have sometimes shown that – when properly motivated – they can move very quickly to fix problems like these.

And the government clearly has an obligation to address this mess in some manner: It’s Congress that mandated the upcoming switch to all-digital broadcasting, after all. It was a highly responsible act when Congress appropriated $1.5 billion to pay for the converter box coupon program a couple of years. It would be equally irresponsible not to act now to make sure consumers can take the fullest advantage of those coupons in securing a converter box.

The specter of millions of angry consumers being forced to pay their hard-earned money to buy more expensive converter boxes because of an arbitrary expiration date on these government coupons should scare the living daylights out of any legislator paying attention. We hope they are, and quickly act pro-actively to fix this mess.

Another possible solution might be for retailers to try and work out some sort of raincheck process with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, so that even expired coupons could be used to purchase the “free” converter boxes once they hit the market in adequate numbers.

Comcast Pays to Pack the House at FCC Net Neutrality Hearing in Boston

Cable giant Comcast made sure it had the best audience money could buy for an FCC hearing in Boston this week examining the company’s highly dubious practice of secretly blocking and delaying certain content on its Internet network.

We blogged about the Comcast situation in depth last week, which you can read by clicking here.

Responding to press calls, Comcast officials confirmed on Tuesday the company had hired people off the street to hold seats for Comcast employees or fill the seats themselves during the hearing.

Our friends over at www.savetheinternet.com have posted a great video on the whole sordid tale, including a recording of one of the seat warmers, saying he was just there because he was getting paid and he had no idea what the hearing was about.

But wait, it gets better.

Comcast employees and the paid seat sitters wore yellow highlighters in their lapels, apparently so they could identify each other. Not all of the highlighter brigade was there to nap, however. Many cheered wildly when a Comcast vice president stepped up to the podium to testify, cheering and whooping.

The Consumerist also has an amazing video of the highlighter-adorned seat warmers and Comcast commandos in action.

This might all be written off as simply bizarre behavior by a deservedly paranoid corporation were it not for the fact that all those paid fannies and Comcast employees weren’t firmly planted in a tightly limited number of seats available at the “public” hearing. Their presence meant many citizens who were truly interested in the hearing were turned away.

Tim Karr of www.savetheinternet.com summed it all up nicely.

“First, Comcast was caught blocking the Internet. Now it has been caught blocking the public from the debate. The only people cheering Comcast are those paid to do so. We didn’t have to pay anyone to attend the hearing. Comcast’s actions raise red flags for most people — with good reason. Clearly, Comcast will resort to just about any underhanded tactic to stack the decks in its favor. And yet Comcast still expects us to trust them with the future of the Internet?”

Comcast can’t be trusred in general. I used Adelphia as my cable internet server @ $24.95/mo. After Comcast took them over the grandfathered me aqt that rate. When I left FL for 5 months in NY I went on a vacation break @ $5/mo, first asking if I would go baxck to the $24.95 rate on my return to FL. I was told yes. Guess what! On my return they wanted $42.95/mo, denying that anyone there had told me otherwise. I’m now a BellSouth DSL user.

I can not imagine how such an important issue was left to this kind of an end..The citizens of this country are being “sold down the road” by the government..Why do we have to accept the change to digital tv..Whats wrong with every day tv today..Is somebody not making as much money as they will be with digital tv..Instead of tying up the senate with baseballs use of steroids why dont they investagate who will profit from the supposed upgrade of the tv industry to digital..

To me, the LEAST “amazing” part of this whole event was the fact that the FCC did NOTHING to Comcast for PACKING the meeting with its own employees and even paying people off the streets to fill seats (yeah, I SAW the two FREAKS who left as soon as the speaking started)! Comcast SHOULD HAVE been fined — or sanctioned in SOME WAY — for pulling such an obvious stunt in order to keep out the REAL public.

I say that’s the LEAST amazing part of the whole thing to me because I find our FCC to be about the most USELESS government agency there is, these days, and considering how BAD some of our government agencies have been the past few years, that’s REALLY SAYING SOMETHING… but our FCC is WAY TOO BUSY fining all the ABC affiliates for a very brief (and quite beautiful, I might add) view of Charlotte Ross’s nude buttocks past 10 P.M., almost 4 years ago, on a show that was RATED TV 14 SLV, so people could BLOCK kids from seeing it, and were FOREWARNED that it contained “adult content and partial nudity,” all within FCC requirements…

Seems to me the FCC is too busy spending its time digging up OLD NEWS like that on shows that haven’t even BEEN ON THE AIR FOR YEARS to spend any time doing any REAL public service, like trying to get the cable companies to play fair or, better yet, get some REAL broadband competition out here so some of us can actually pay a REASONABLE RATE!

I’m not in Boston, and I don’t have Comcast. I’m in South Carolina, and I have Charter, but I’m just as unhappy and fed up… Put another way, to quote from the movie, “Network,” “I’m mad as HELL, and I’m NOT going to take it any more!”

Again, don’t expect ANY FCC investigations into any Big-Business Broadband provider unless there’s CLEARLY ILLEGAL behavior that gets AMPLE MEDIA ATTENTION for at least the remainder of the Bush Administration.

This administration has done everything it can, with every sector of corporate America to give larger corporations as much free reign to run roughshod through the economy as possible, regardless of the consequences, in its misguided belief that they’re following some “free market principles” that will enhance the economy, overall, in the long run, and NOW the hens are finally coming home to ROOST here in its final year, with Stagflation for the first time in 30 years, mounting budget deficits, a mushrooming debt for a never-ending war we started in a country that was minding its own business and for which we have NO exit strategy, and they just keep telling the same old lies like they think they’ll become the truth if they tell them long enough.

I was ALMOST a Republican at one point, but at this point I’m ALMOST a Democrat, and certainly plan to vote that way THIS year. It’s time we level the playing field and get some true competition back into the American economy, rather than “The Golden Rule” simply meaning that those with the most Gold make all the rules!

THE FCC, FOLLOWING BUSH’S LEAD HAS LEAD THE WAY FOR BIG BUSINESS TO SUCK THE CONSUMER’S BLOOD WITH PROFITS AND HUGE EXECUTIVE BONUSES AS THE
REWARD. COMCAST HAS PAID OFF THE FCC AND BUSH TO MONOPOLIZE THE TV CONVERSION SYSTEM. THIS IS ANOTHER NATIONAL DISGRACE. BUT THEN THE FCC UNDER BUSH HAS HAD THE IMPACT OF 911 ON THE AVERAGE
CONSUMERE: DEVASTATING RESULTS.

I got my converter at http://www.compupartsandmore.com for $21.99 + the govt coupon, with free shipping. I get more channels with a better picture quality than before. I am using the same antenna as before, so you don’t need a special digital antenna as some say. It is not as good as real digital tv, but a lot better than what I had before the converter box.